A Computer-Assisted Approach to Auditory-Verbal Education

Coordinator:

Andrea Hathazi

Marina Petric

"Babeş-Bolyai“ University

Cluj -Napoca

Deafness, hearing impairment, or hearing loss

is a partial or total inability to hear.

caused by many different factors, including but not limited to age, noise, illness, chemicals and physical trauma

three categories: type of hearing loss, degree of hearing loss, and configuration of hearing loss.

The Auditory-Verbal (A-V) approach

is a communication model employed by parents and professionals upon diagnosis of a child’s hearing loss (Schwartz, 2006; Stokes, 1999).

auditory verbal education is responsible with the training of a hearing affected child in better using his hearing aid or cochlear implant.

The final goal of the therapy is to teach the child to understand speech and learn how to communicate by means of verbal sounds in order to enhance his chances of integration in mainstream society.

The classic approach in training the hearing impaired is mostly based on visits to specialists where the child is taught to use the residual hearing and include it in all areas of communication.

Implies regular visits to specialised cabinets from a very early age, in order to train the child to correlate sound stimuli with images of the emitter

Characteristics (Rhodes,2006)

(1) parents or primary caretakers of the child must be actively involved in the child’s individualised daily intervention strategies.

(2) parents must ensure that the child takes advantage of current hearing technology in an assertive;

(3) parents must enrol the child in regular educational programmes for normally hearing children, thereby avoiding the grouping of children with hearing loss.

Goals

• a short-term goal of this approach is that of preschool integration for the child with a hearing impairment

• the long-term goals include full assimilation

of a communicatively competent child into the family system, academic grade school environment and social fabric of the larger community

An Example of Auditory-Verbal Education “E- Learning” Application (Grigore; Velican; Crăciunoiu, 2010).

The computer assisted education or e-learning is nowadays a growing field.

E-learning type computer applications also aim at making the learning process more accessible, by offering internet based solutions that disseminate information in an easier and more rapid way.

Aims at helping children with affected hearing

in associating visual stimuli (in this case pictures of objects, animals or natural phenomena) with sound

The entire architecture features two main sections:

- training section

- testing section

o Both these sections are preceded by a setup screen in which the supervisor can choose the parameters of stimulation.

http://ai.pub.ro/education.html

Education stage.Setup screen

Education Stage

Testing stage. Setup screen.

Testing stage

Testing stage: End screen

Empirical Studies

seven children were selected on the following criteria:

- Auditory deficiencies of different degrees.

- Some experience using auditory prosthesis.

- Between 4 and 7 years old. It had a pre-evaluation stage, a training stage and

a post-evaluation stage.

The first assessed the initial ability of the children to perceive sound stimuli while the latter was meant to mark the improvement of every subject.

The pre-evaluation was conducted using all the available stimuli and the testing part of the application

Sounds were played only after the images were displayed in order to assure the child‘s complete attention.

The training was conducted over a period of three weeks, consisting of two sessions of 15 minutes per week for every child

The post-evaluation was a test given to every child in order to observe the improvement

The main results and observations

Significant improvements were obtained for 5 out of 7 subjects

Two of the seven children had outstanding results.

Better results were obtained in the cases of Type

A, and Type C

Children were no longer feeling reluctantly and were no longer looking for support on their decision.

Towards the end of the experiment, children were able to give answers at a much faster rate, indicating they were getting more familiar with the system.

One of the most important results was obtained in stimulating the child‘s attention and concentration. They were visibly paying more attention than usual and were interested in giving only correct answers.

Thank you for your attention!

Bibliography:

Laury, A.M., & Todd, N. W. (2012). The Ethiology of Childhood Hearing Impairment. În Les R. Schmeltz. (Editor), The NCHAM eBook- A Resource guide for early hearing Detection & Intervension (pp.70-82). Utah State University.

Grigore, O., Velican, V., Crăciunoiu, A. (2010). Experimental Results Obtained in Computer Assisted Auditory-Verbal Education. Journal of Education and Information Technologies Issue 4, Volume 4.

Popa, M., Grigore, O., Velican, V. (2013). Computer Assisted Auditory-Verbal Education. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences. www.sciencedirect.com

Rhoades, E. A. (2006). Research Outcomes of Auditory- Verbal Intervention: Is the Approach Justified?. Deafness and Education International. www.interscience.wiley.com

En.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deafness